Unknown Bryant has Tour lead after 62

Posted: Thursday, November 03, 2005

ATLANTA - A man who even referred to himself as "Bart Who?" made a pretty sizable step away from obscurity Thursday at East Lake Golf Club.

After a tournament course-record 8-under 62, played with workmanlike precision, and it's not even relative unknown Bart Bryant who's atop the star-laden leaderboard after 18 holes at the Tour Championship.

Besides blistering a reasonably tough layout, Bryant did something that's incredibly difficult to achieve in a field filled with the PGA Tour's top 30 money winners.

He made the gallery wonder - some aloud - just who exactly they were watching.

"Bryant?" an onlooker said as the leader walked up the 17th fairway. "Who's that?"

When he examined who he'd be competing against earlier in the week, Bryant said he had nearly the same reaction.

"I'm working hard to tell myself that I belong," said Bryant, a 42-year-old who won the Memorial earlier this year to help get him crack the top 30. He entered the Tour Championship ranked 23rd.

"I'm trying to prove it to myself," he said. "If I go out and shoot three more 62s, maybe I'll believe it."

Well, a bogey-free round that included a 5-under 30 on the back side was a good start on a picture-perfect afternoon with benign conditions that begged for birdies.

And it wasn't just "Bart Who?" doing the scoring. Some of the Tour's big boys, Tiger included, are predictably lurking.

Retief Goosen, the defending champ, had eight birdies on his card to finish two shots back at 6-under 64. And that score was just a stroke off the previous tournament-low at East Lake, set by Vijay Singh in 1998.

"I think it's as easy as you'll see it," Goosen said of the course. "The course is there for the taking, that's for sure."

Kenny Perry was one shot back of Bryant heading into 17, but bogeyed out to end up at 5-under 65.

Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods are at 4 under.

But Thursday wasn't about the Sergios, Retiefs and Tigers.

It was Bart's day.

Bryant said he began to sense that concept when he sank a birdie putt from 24 feet on the par-3 11th hole. He then birdied 12 and 13 to get to 6 under. An eagle at the par-5 15th, one of three on the day, moved him to 8 under.

His "worst" shot of the day, he said, came at the 17th. From the middle of the fairway, Bryant left his approach from 136 yards a little left. It dripped onto the ledge of a bunker, but a foot or two to the right and he would've been tapping in yet another birdie.

With a ridiculous stance - his left foot up the slope and way above the ball and the other gripping for traction in the bunker - Bryant flipped a shot up that landed in the hole, rattled the flagstick and then bounced out 20 inches away to set up a simple par putt.

Playing partner Ted Purdy ran up to him and said, "You got robbed, man." Just putting it that close let Bryant know it was "his day," he said.

"Zen plays a big part of it. When you're in the zone, it just happens like that," Purdy said of Bryant, who is playing in his first Tour Championship and didn't even pick up a club Wednesday after playing Tuesday in the Pro-Am. "He played flawless golf all day."

Bryant was even more of a Tour nobody until he broke through to win the Valero Texas Open last year in San Antonio. He surfaced even more after winning the Memorial and Jack's course in June.

Bryant said he needed to kick himself into gear last season, at age 41, after years of "sabotaging" himself. He had help, also, from his brother Brad, who played well this year on the Champions' Tour. Instructor Brian Mogg also helped shape up the mental side of his game.

Last year, Mogg pulled Bryant aside and showed him a golfer's statistics from the past six or seven years.

He asked Bryant if he thought the numbers would add up to a pretty successful golfer on the Tour. Bryant said yes.

"Well," Bryant said, "that golfer was me."

Playing with more confidence, rounds such as Thursday's were possible. However, Bryant said he doesn't think Tiger & Co. are shaking in their spikes just yet.

"He's probably going, 'Bart who?'" Bryant said. "To scare Tiger a little bit, I'm going to have to put up at least two or three of those up, strung together."